Air Force One

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday posted a falsified image of former President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, waving before boarding an Air Force One that had been spray-painted with graffiti.

It came months after another post by the president that showed the couple as primates in a jungle. That one was deleted after stiff, bipartisan backlash.

The latest image shows the Obamas smiling and waving at the top of stairs alongside a baby blue and white presidential plane with graffiti painted on it that included the Democrat’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can,” “Obama” and “BLM,” short for Black Lives Matter. The post also shows graffiti in Arabic on the plane that says the phrase “alhamdulillah,” which means “praise be to God” or “thank God.”

The use of graffiti is a coded message to remind people of crime and urban decay and has been used in racist messaging against Black people in the past.

Trump has a yearslong record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas, and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric. That includes everything from feeding the lie that Obama was not born in the United States to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries and posts that have sparked anger on his Truth Social website.

The president’s post of the Obamas as primates came in February, during the first week of Black History Month. It was removed following widespread criticism from civil rights leaders and Republican senators. Trump refused to apologize, however, and a staffer was later blamed for making the post.

This time, the presidential plane is a sensitive topic since Trump last week took his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One — a retrofitted Boeing 747-800 worth $400 million gifted by Qatar. The aircraft’s trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the sky was replaced with Trump’s preferred color scheme: a navy-blue belly with red and gold stripes.

After giving a speech on the National Mall in Washington to mark Independence Day and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on Saturday night, Trump had no public events Sunday and spent the day at his golf club in Virginia. He’s scheduled to leave Monday for Turkey to attend a summit with NATO allies.

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Nor did a spokesperson for the Obamas.

Sunday’s post also followed one from last month when Trump shared an doctored image of Obama’s new presidential library in Chicago so that it looked like the building had a large bag of garbage on top and was surrounded by a wasteland. “The Obama Library ten years from now will be a ‘Mecca’ for those who hate America! President DJT,” he wrote then.

Trump has frequently criticized the Obama library in public comments, and he posted the library image twice on his social media platform.

The Air Force One image was part of a series of Sunday posts Trump made on Truth Social, including a past picture that appeared to show Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni grinning and gazing upward at Trump under the words “RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED.”

That, too, could touch off a new firestorm at this week’s meetings in Turkey, since Trump had suggested that Meloni asked “over and over” for a photo with him during the recent Group of Seven summit.

Trump’s comments prompted Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to cancel a subsequent, planned trip to Washington, while Meloni called Trump’s account “completely fabricated,” saying “Italy and I never beg.”

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday took his maiden voyage on a new Air Force One — a retrofitted Boeing 747 worth $400 million gifted by Qatar that embeds his personality more deeply into the institution of the American presidency.

Gone is the trademark light blue hull that helped Air Force One blend into the sky. The refurbished jet is painted to Trump’s preferred color scheme of a navy blue belly and red and gold stripes. It has the luxury features that the president believes a commander-in-chief’s entourage should have — plush carpets, lie-flat seats, wood paneling and a presidential seal on the seat belts, according to reported tours of the plane.

Trump told reporters that he was proud of the luxurious plane. “You can do two things: You can low-key it, or you can show it,” he said.

Reporters are generally not permitted to take photos on the plane unless Trump is present. But on Wednesday, Trump administration staffers posted images of the plane’s interior on social media.

White House communications director Steven Cheung posted a photo of aides gathered around a circular table that had off-white place mats and leather captain’s chairs. Monica Crowley, the chief of U.S. protocol, posted a picture of herself perched on a leather couch between a pair of Air Force One throw pillows. Mounted on the wall behind her was a framed photo of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.

The jet carried Trump to North Dakota to see the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, its first official visitor ahead of its opening on the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The gift from the Middle Eastern power raised ethical concerns, but Trump saw the plane as a necessary replacement to the 35-year-old planes that had previously ferried him as president.

“This is a gift from a country that has treated us very well,” Trump said.

The new jet will only temporarily be in the nation’s service, as Boeing is expected to deliver in 2028 long-delayed planes that will permanently serve as Air Force One. Trump, a Republican, has said in the past that the Qatar plane would end up in a presidential library.

The Air Force has said that it did little to change the cabin layout of the plane and that it spent less than $400 million on security upgrades.

Nikhinson and Boak write for the Associated Press.

June 19 (UPI) — A Boeing 747-200 made its last flight as Air Force One after it brought President Donald Trump home from Europe this week.

“Well done, good and faithful servant,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung posted Thursday on X. “The Last Ride.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino also posted a tribute with a video on X.

“I have been fortunate to fly around the world on this iconic plane for 5½ years – of the 35 years it has been serving the U.S. Presidents…THANK YOU… .”

There are two 747-200s working as Air Force One, designated VC-25A by the Air Force. The two have tail numbers 28000 and 29000. The latter is retiring.

The plane has been in operation since 1990, with President George H.W. Bush as its first presidential passenger.

“The VC-25B Bridge aircraft will soon join the active executive airlift fleet alongside the VC-25A and C-32,” an Air Force spokesperson said.

Three 747-800s are being prepared to step in, including the luxury jet donated by the Qatari government. Officials have said it should be ready for use this summer and that the Air Force had finished its modifications and testing of the craft.

Gen. Dale White, the Department of Defense’s direct reporting portfolio manager for critical major weapons systems, said in a May statement that the Qatari plane will “relieve pressure on the aging VC-25A fleet.”

“Ultimately, the Bridge aircraft fulfills a critical short-term requirement, guaranteeing the Air Force continues to execute its no-fail mission for the commander in chief while laying a rock-solid foundation for the future,” the release said.

The new planes will have Trump’s preferred color scheme of red, white, gold and dark blue. He proposed the change while in office for his first term, but President Joe Biden reversed the plan back to the traditional colors. When Trump was re-elected, the new color scheme was once again adopted.

May 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has said he will speak with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te about a stalled $14 billion arms deal, a call that would be precedent-setting for a sitting U.S. president and likely anger China.

“I’ll speak to him,” Trump said Thursday from the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.

The president was responding to a reporter’s question on whether he planned to call Lai before making a final decision on the Congress-cleared weapons deal, the future of which remains uncertain following Trump’s visit last week to Beijing for meetings with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Taiwan has requested the weapons package as it faces an aggressive China, which claims sovereignty over the self-governing island it views as a breakaway province and has said it will take it back by force if necessary.

The weapons deal was pre-approved by Congress in January 2025, and Taiwan’s legislative body earlier this month approved a special defense budget of $25 billion to buy weapons from the United States. The package now requires Trump to sign off on it.

But Trump on Friday told reporters aboard Air Force One while en route back to the United States following his visit with Xi in Beijing that they had “talked a lot about Taiwan” and that he would “make a determination over the next fairly short period” on whether to give the arms deal final approval.

Taiwan was a significant topic during the trip, with Xi warning Trump that the island was “the most important issue” in bilateral ties and that, if mishandled, could trigger “clashes and even conflicts.”

Amid the uncertainty, Lai issued a Facebook post Sunday night stating Taiwan-U.S. security cooperation and arms sales “are key elements in maintaining regional peace and stability” and that the island’s security is the region’s security.

Trump did not say Wednesday when he would speak with Lai or discuss specifics concerning the arms deal.

“We have that situation very well in hand,” he said, adding that he had an “amazing” meeting with Xi.

“We’ll work on that,” he said.

Trump spoke with Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016, when he was the president-elect, but no sitting U.S. president is known to have spoken with the leader of Taiwan since Jan. 1, 1979, when the Carter administration formally severed diplomatic ties with the Republic of China, the official name of Taiwan’s government, and established relations with the People’s Republic of China in Beijing.

Spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian of Beijing’s State Council Taiwan Affairs Office gave reporters a standard answer during a press conference Wednesday, stating: “We firmly oppose the United States conducting any form of official exchanges with China’s Taiwan region, and we firmly oppose the United States selling weapons to China’s Taiwan region.”

“This position is consistent and clear,” she said.

UPI has contacted Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry for comment.

Democrats and some Republicans have urged Trump to approve the arms deal and expressed concern over its future as the president was in Beijing.

“Trump must not sell out Taiwan, period,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a social media statement.

The Republic of China, the current government of Taiwan, once governed mainland China but retreated to the island following its defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

The Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as part of China under its One China principle and seeks reunification with the island — an act Taiwan says would amount to an illegal annexation.

May 18 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has renewed his threats of mass violence against Iran, warning Tehran that “the Clock is Ticking” as the stalemate in talks to end the war shows no signs of ending.

In a statement on his Truth Social platform on Sunday night, Trump wrote: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”

“TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

The two-sentence statement echoed the scale of violence he threatened April 7, shortly before the cease-fire was announced, when he warned Iran to make an agreement to end the war or “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Trump has been seeking an agreement with Iran to end the war since the conflict was halted April 8 with a cease-fire to permit negotiations.

Those negotiations have progressed little if at all since talks broke down in Islamabad in mid-April.

An Iranian proposal recently sent to the United States was rejected by Trump, who told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday en route to Washington from China that he looked at it and found the first sentence unacceptable.

“Well, I looked at it, and if I don’t like the first sentence, I just throw it away,” Trump said.

Asked what the first sentence was, Trump replied, “An unacceptable sentence.”

Trump said he is seeking a lengthy suspension of Iran’s nuclear program, stating that two decades may comply with his demands but “it’s got to be a real 20 years.”

According to Iranian state media Press TV, Iran’s proposal calls for a comprehensive end to the war, full compensation from the United States for damages, the removal of sanctions, the release of frozen Iranian assets and recognition of Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported the United States responded with five demands: no compensation, no unfreezing of assets, the handover of 881.8 pounds of uranium to the United States, only one nuclear facility remaining active and making a halt to the war on all fronts conditional on negotiations.

In response to Trump’s threat on Sunday, Brig. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, senior spokesman for Iran’s Armed Forces, called Trump “delusional,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“Repeating any foolishness to compensate for America’s disgrace in the third imposed war against Iran will bring no consequence other than receiving more crushing and severe blows for that country,” Shekarchi said.

He warned Trump if the United States resumed its attacks, “the assets and decayed army of that country will face new, offensive, surprising and stormy scenarios.”